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WASHINGTON — Bilal al-Sudani was no stranger to American counterterrorism officers.
Earlier than becoming a member of the Islamic State affiliate in Somalia, Mr. al-Sudani was subjected to punitive sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Division in 2012 for his involvement with Al Shabab, Al Qaeda’s department within the East African nation.
But it surely wasn’t till American officers began digging deeper into the background of one other Islamic State department, the one in Afghanistan that had carried out the lethal bombing at Kabul’s worldwide airport in August 2021, that analysts totally realized Mr. al-Sudani oversaw a sprawling ISIS monetary and logistical community throughout Africa, Europe and Afghanistan.
Mr. al-Sudani’s newly revealed function because the financier for the ISIS department chargeable for the demise of 13 U.S. service members in Kabul rocketed him to the highest ranks of U.S. counterterrorism kill-or-capture lists, senior American officers mentioned. Final week, commandos from the Navy’s SEAL Group 6 killed him in an early-morning helicopter-to-ground raid in a distant cave complicated in northern Somalia.
“Al-Sudani helped to place cash within the pockets of the identical parts of ISIS-Okay chargeable for Abbey Gate,” mentioned a senior U.S. official, referring to ISIS-Khorasan and the Kabul airport location of the bombing.
The demise of Mr. al-Sudani, whose Somalia-based headquarters coordinated trainers and funding for Islamic State associates in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and South Africa, underscores the group’s world connections and assist construction, analysts say.
Regardless of his killing, analysts level to ISIS’ resiliency practically 4 years for the reason that finish of its so-called caliphate, or non secular state, in Iraq and Syria because it leverages terrorist networks to maintain new and established associates.
“Sudani’s demise might briefly disrupt this administrative community and the assist reaching these associates, however is unlikely to dampen this assist completely,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Crucial Threats Venture mentioned in an evaluation this week.
Extra on U.S. Armed Forces
Below intense army strain by the USA and its native allies, the Islamic State’s management in Iraq and Syria has confronted important useful resource constraints lately, a pointy decline from the group’s peak as one of many best-financed terrorist organizations on the planet.
This led the Islamic State to direct its associates to pursue monetary self-sufficiency, as a number of “workplaces” coordinate income technology and cash laundering between associates and networks inside areas, fairly than cash flowing from Iraq and Syria to branches world wide, in response to a latest evaluation within the Lengthy Warfare Journal, an internet site run by the Basis for Protection of Democracies that tracks army strikes in opposition to militant teams.
ISIS has tried to increase its affect in Africa by way of large-scale operations in areas the place authorities management is restricted. In saying sanctions in opposition to 4 South African-based financiers for the group, the Treasury Division mentioned final March that ISIS branches in Africa had been counting on native fund-raising schemes comparable to theft, extortion and kidnapping for ransom, in addition to monetary assist from the ISIS hierarchy.
Somalia is best often called a sanctuary for Al Shabab, the terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda, than for the Islamic State. However the ISIS department within the nation has performed an outsized function for the worldwide terrorist group regardless of having solely 200 to 280 fighters.
The Islamic State’s Somalia wing features a regional workplace known as Al Karrar, which serves as a coordination hub for operations within the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, South Africa and the networks between them, Caleb Weiss and Ryan O’Farrell wrote within the Lengthy Warfare Journal evaluation.
With counterparts in West Africa, South Asia, Syria and elsewhere, the Al Karrar workplace oversees substantial fund-raising operations by way of extortion rackets and felony exercise in Somalia and South Africa, the evaluation concluded.
However U.S. and different Western intelligence companies have previously yr detected rising ties between Al Karrar and ISIS Khorasan in Afghanistan. A United Nations report final July concluded that Al Karrar facilitated the move of cash to the Afghan affiliate by way of cells in Yemen, Kenya and Britain.
The U.N. report mentioned that ISIS Khorasan “makes use of these funds within the acquisition of weapons and to pay the salaries of fighters.”
Earlier than his demise, Mr. al-Sudani was thought to play a key function in, and even direct, the Al Karrar workplace, officers mentioned. “There’s proof he was pulling the strings from East Africa,” mentioned Heather Nicell, an Africa analyst with Janes, the London-based protection intelligence agency.
One senior administration official mentioned that nobody else within the Islamic State rivaled Mr. al-Sudani in his capacity to obtain and distribute illicit funds — as a lot as lots of of hundreds of {dollars} at any given time — to far-flung ISIS associates on at the least three continents by way of a community of clandestine contacts he had constructed over greater than a decade.
As Mr. al-Sudani’s function in supporting ISIS fighters in Afghanistan — together with the Kabul airport bomber — got here into sharper focus, the army’s secretive Joint Particular Operations Command ramped up its planning to kill or seize him, officers mentioned.
The Particular Operations raid on Jan. 25 passed off in a distant mountainous cave complicated within the Puntland area of northern Somalia, months after American spy networks first detected Mr. al-Sudani’s hidden headquarters and started utilizing spy satellites and different surveillance plane to check his actions.
The American commandos had been ready to seize Mr. al-Sudani, however he and 10 different Sudanese associates had been killed in a gun battle after they resisted, a senior administration official informed reporters after the raid was disclosed.
A mannequin for these sorts of operations passed off in Could 2015, when two dozen Delta Power commandos entered Syria aboard Black Hawk helicopters and V-22 Ospreys from Iraq and killed Abu Sayyaf, whom American officers described because the Islamic State’s “emir of oil and gasoline.”
The knowledge harvested from the laptops, cellphones and different supplies recovered in that raid yielded the primary essential insights concerning the Islamic State’s management construction, monetary operations and safety measures.
The truth that the Pentagon despatched commandos to kill or seize Mr. al-Sudani — a choice that required President Biden’s approval — fairly than utilizing a much less dangerous drone operation indicated his significance.
In one other signal of Mr. al-Sudani’s significance, the commandos rehearsed their secret mission at an undisclosed location within the area with related terrain. The Navy SEAL Group 6 forces that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 in Pakistan had practiced their mission on a mock-up of the bin Laden compound in a lot the identical method.
For the raid in opposition to Mr. al-Sudani’s hide-out, American officers mentioned about two dozen members of SEAL Group 6 flew in Military MH-47 Chinook helicopters, operated by the a hundred and sixtieth Particular Operations Aviation Regiment, often called the Evening Stalkers, from a small, unassuming Navy vessel crusing off the Somali coast.
The commandos landed a long way from the cave complicated to keep away from detection, and made their method by foot to Mr. al-Sudani’s cave complicated. There, an hourlong firefight ensued with Mr. al-Sudani and his associates holed up within the caves till they had been killed, officers mentioned.
A senior U.S. army official mentioned the commandos recovered a trove of fabric — together with laptop computer computer systems and laborious drives, cellphones and different info — from Mr. al-Sudani’s hide-out that would present ideas for future counterterrorism operations.
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